Maybe you haven’t had time to read our epic account of the life and death of Tiara Gray, a sailor stationed in San Diego. (You should. People have called it “superb” and “heart-wrenching.”) If not, we got you. Here are three takeaways.
Background: Tiara was experiencing serious mental health struggles. Navy doctors had hospitalized her twice. But then her command began sending her on underways again onboard the Essex — the very thing that had triggered and exacerbated her mental health struggles. She took her own life on board the Essex on April 2, 2018.
Takeaway one: The military is in a recruitment crisis. That means there’s a huge incentive for recruiters to get people into the military — and for officers to make sure they stay in. Especially when a sailor is bright and skilled, as Tiara was, commanders frequently try to keep those people in. Tiara also lied about previous mental health issues during the recruitment process. It’s common for recruiters to aid people in glossing over certain facts. As one recruiter told the Military Times: “What it takes to get in the Army is, quite frankly, a lot of fraud and perjury.”
Takeaway two: Tiara saw more than 25 different licensed Navy therapists in less than a year. Her care was chaotic. Her providers at times seemed to be working off of totally different information. Some marked her a “high” risk for suicide; others marked her “low.” Some doctors marked her not fit for duty. Others, who saw her no more than one time, marked her as fit for full duty. This lack of communication — and lack of baseline factual information — played a role in sending her back out to sea.
Takeaway three: The Navy psychologists Tiara saw have to serve two masters, in a way that is not true of other mental health providers. They must serve the patient and the needs of the Navy. Commanding officers are allowed to view many parts of a person’s file. They’re allowed to weigh in on whether that person should be sent back to work or not. “You can have a commander that says, ‘We really wanna keep this person,’” one expert said. “You can hear those directions like they’re an order, even if they’re not.”
Suicide rates among women in the Navy are at a crisis level, as we reported in 2022. Young women in the military are more than twice as likely to die by suicide than their civilian peers.
Tiara’s story struck a chord with other service members. In the r/Navy community on Reddit, the story is one of the top posts of the week and hundreds of people have weighed in — including a few who say they knew Tiara. “It is clear this woman was failed by leadership and medical at almost every step,” one person wrote.
The Learning Curve: The Attendance ‘Vibe Shift’
Our education reporter Jakob McWhinney has been beating the drum on shocking increases to students missing school for more than a year.
And now, the New York Times is dancing to his tune. The Times examined chronic absenteeism rates across the entire country and found they have massively increased in the post-pandemic years. The Times also featured chronic absenteeism on its hugely-popular podcast (almost as popular as ours) the Daily.
McWhinney has often highlighted just how detrimental missing school can be for kids. When kids miss school they fall behind. When they miss more school, this effect compounds exponentially.
The Times, however, focussed on the vibe shiftiness of it all. (McWhinney has also written about this.) Many people now think of school as more optional than they did before the pandemic. That means schools can’t fix this problem simply by enlisting more busses to make sure kids have a ride to school. They’ll have to rearrange people’s thinking in order to convince them again that school is no longer just an option.
Read the full Learning Curve here.
State Auditor: Marijuana Permit Standards Are Falling Short in San Diego, Other Cities
San Diego and other local governments are falling short of their own standards for permitting marijuana businesses, the state auditor said in a report released Wednesday.
“In general, we determined that cities and counties (local jurisdictions) could improve their cannabis‑permitting processes to increase public confidence and mitigate the risks of corruption,” California State Auditor Grant Parks wrote.
The audit looked at permitting practices for San Diego and five other jurisdictions, including the cities of Fresno, Sacramento and South Lake Tahoe, as well as Monterey and Santa Barbara Counties. All those local governments had policies and procedures that complied with cannabis laws, but failed to follow them to prevent “conflicts of interest, abuse, and favoritism.”
For instance, all six local governments were inconsistent about documenting criminal background checks of applicants. They all had at least one person involved in the permitting process who didn’t didn’t disclose financial interests, such as investments, businesses, real estate and income, that could pose conflicts of interest. And four of them, including San Diego, didn’t ensure that people involved in the permitting process filed impartiality statements.
In Other News
- National City’s City Council rejected a proposed camping ban on Tuesday. Councilmembers first want to explore other options to clear encampments and wait for the city’s first homeless shelter to come online. (Union-Tribune)
- County officials have informed hundreds of victims of the Jan. 22 floods that they need to register with FEMA to stay enrolled in a hotel voucher program, or find somewhere else to stay. (KPBS)
- Turns out San Diego’s streets aren’t so sexy. A new city assessment of the city’s roads shows that hundreds are “extremely distressed and require full reconstruction.” The highest concentration of roads that the city deemed as a failed road are in southeastern San Diego, Clairemont and Mira Mesa. (CBS 8)
- An employee of a tire shop in Midway went viral on social media after he carried a woman out of the flooded garage during this weekend’s storm. The pair reunited this week. (NBC 7)
The Morning Report was written by Will Huntsberry, Deborah Brennan and Andrea Lopez-Villafaña. It was edited by Andrea Lopez-Villafaña.